Hon. Bill Bennett: Good morning America, how are you? It’s morning in America. Well one thing he’s learned at 14 how to use time at a podium that’s good. That’ll bear you in good stead, play by the rules, it’s a good thing to do. Actually play by the rules. It’s good to be with you all again. I said conservatism come of age when we get our sense a humor and a sense of humor this weekend that’s for sure. Standup comedy, amazing. How about Jonathan Krohn? What do you do when a 14 year old says he’s been friends with you for a very long time? Jonathan Krohn, the early years, the middle years. 9 through 12, you know. He is a walking refutation of what the mainstream media says we are by the way, pessimistic, old, relics, in the past. You want morning in America, that’s morning in America right there. I hope our friends in the media will interview the  stodgy Jonathan Krohn, stodgy and cranky.

Thank you for getting up early this morning. I am Bill Bennett and I am not running for anything and I don’t, and I don’t need to and I never really was tempted to that much and when you look at the lineup, you look at Pence, you look at Santorum, you look at Romney, you look at Pawlenty, the many more I’m not mentioning doesn’t mean a thing. We have a very good lineup. We have a lot of very, very good people. And look at those in the wings, look at Marco Rubio. Look at Toomey. Bobby Jindal, Haley Barber, we got a lot of great people, great people, not a worry in the world about our future. There’s a lot going on that’s good here at CPAC and it’s a great time to be a conservative. We are indeed on offense. I’ve played a lot of football and it’s true what Andrew said, you’re on offense or you’re on defense and you’re either moving the ball on them or they’re moving the ball on you. We’re moving the ball on them and that’s a very good thing.

I want to pick up on a theme of Rick Santorum’s you might guess from my green tie I just completed a book, it’s called A Century Turns. It’s Volume 3 of America: The Last Best Hope, it’s a look back over the last 20 years, it’s a history of the last 20 years, not easy to write, it being so close. But one thing that kept coming out in my research was the lesson the terrorists were teaching us in the ’90s but that we were not learning. They hit us again and again and again and our tepid response, our lawfare, not warfare but lawfare as Andrew McCarthy has documented better than anyone, did little but instigate them further, encouraged them further. Indeed the more indictments we issued the more terrorism we got. We were hit in ’93. We were hit again in ’96 hard. We were hit in ’98 twice. Bin Laden declared two wars against us. And we were hit again in 2000, then came 2001. We’ve been taught that nature abhors a vacuum, but you know what else thrives in a vacuum, in a deficit of American leadership and strength? Tyranny and Islamic radicalism. Last week, last week that rouge nation, Iran, celebrated the 31st anniversary of its revolution. Remember this, since the revolution Iran has been at war with us and through its terror machine Hezbollah it has killed more Americans than any other terror organization until September 11. At the same time its president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has done all he can to acquire nuclear weapons. This is the same man who has spoken dozens of times of liquidating Israel and of imagining a world without America. This is the same regime that tortures and brutalizes democratic dissenters on its main streets.

The response from this administration from this president has been three fold. First he has done what no other president has done, he has called the regime the Islamic Republic of Iran. It is no republic. He is giving credibility where it is not deserved. Second, the most famous statement of his presidency about Iran came when human rights activists throughout the world asked that he say a few words on behalf of democratic dissidence there. His words I quote “It is not productive given the history of U.S. and Iranian relations to be seen as meddling.” Mr. President, that is not quite Mr. Gorbachev tear down this wall. And third this president has attempted again and again to try to appease the regime by negotiations and sanctions and offers of technology hasn’t worked, and won’t. So why am I consumed with this issue? This is why. When the history books are written about what was and what was not done while the world’s worst terrorist state was building the world’s worst weapon and terrorizing its own and others I’d like those books to mention there were those like Rick Santorum and like you and like myself who gave a damn and tried to publicize it. I hope the first book on this will not be titled While America Slept. Our duty is to keep that book from being written.

Now think about the human rights legacy that Ronald Reagan ushered in and what it has come to in our age. Think about Natan Sharanksy who in his memoires wrote about how much it meant to him and other soviet dissidents who were in prison when Ronald Reagan spoke of the USSR as the evil empire, remember tapping on the walls to other prisoners. He said they tapped those words to each other because it gave them hope, your word Mr. President, because somebody finally cared about them. Our president who used to be a community organizer, who said he spoke on behalf of the downtrodden has turned a cold shoulder and a blind eye to the dissidents of Iran. Our president who speaks reverentially of Harriett Tubman, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., what about Netta Mr. President, don’t forget Netta. Why isn’t this your cause, President Obama? It is the opposite of what someone who cares about human rights would do, your policy. It was the opposite of what Ronald Reagan did to Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

One final word and I will be done before my time is up. America, despite the naysayers is not in decline. Do not fall for that label. We have been through worse times. The bloodiest day in American history is still Antietam and the few months after that Ronald Reagan, well, pretty much same thing. Abraham Lincoln, a few hundred years later, a hundred years later Abraham Lincoln said to the congress we shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth. Well we didn’t lose it then and we won’t lose it now. I would remind the president that his biggest applause line in the State of the Union was when he said America will not be second in anything. Some speech writer finally figured that out. But let me also say that to fight decline we should neither shape shirk our responsibilities or bow. When the United States bows figuratively or literally to foreign leaders I understand why our enemies think we can be pushed around. The United States President should not bow to anyone. If the president doesn’t want to take a lesson from a republican he can take one from a democrat, Franklin Delano Roosevelt at Hyde Park when the King and Queen of England visited him he was told not to touch the king, commoners were not allowed to touch the king and to offer him only tea. FDR disregarded it, as I write in my book, slapped the king on the knee and said how about a martini. One thing I very much agreed with him on. America doesn’t bow ladies and gentlemen, it stands up straight and it leads. We are not told by others what to do. We say what needs doing and then we usually go do it. Whatever people say about the decline of the United States just remember this if you are in some poor, immiserated, god-forsaken and there are no god-forsaken but feeling like god-forsaken place in the world and you see a group of men coming over a hill carrying a flag and a uniform you get on your knees and you pray that it is the flag of the United States of America. Andrew, Andrew Brietbart was studying about the New York Times inadvertently hitting the truth, The Washington Post hits it more often, hit it last week, quoted a man named Jon Louie DeFark, he lives in Haiti under a tarp. He did a long interview with him and said, what’s the solution? He said the solution here is like it is anywhere, the United States should just take us over. Not a policy I recommend but it proves my point.

Let me close in 1865 Abraham Lincoln visited liberated Richmond. When he got there a group of slaves saw him. On seeing Lincoln they knelt in front of him and this is what he said to them. Do not kneel to me. You kneel only to God and thank him for your freedom. Liberty is your birthright. God gave it to you as he gave it to others and it is a sin that you have been deprived of it so many years. Get up. Conservatives, free men and women everywhere, get up, do not bow or kneel to any other man, get up, stay up, do not capitulate, do not appease, bow only to God, stand tall for this country, stand tall and strong for your children, defend her and her allies as only we, only you and I and our soldiers and our leaders can. Thank you very much.

 

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